Snow Falls
by Janiqua
Summary: At the end of Volume Four, the Doctor watches as Machika waits for Rain at the Border. What were his thoughts during those three heartbreaking days?


**A/N:** I love Immortal Rain! I just read the fourth volume for the first time tonight, and I _had_ to write this! The ending was just so heartbreaking, and it's after midnight right now, but I just can't help myself! This fic isn't long, so it won't take you long to read it! Please just spare a few minutes and do so, and then tell me what you think. I love the feedback!

**Warning:** This short little fic is just so full of spoilers for the fourth volume! Please keep that in mind…

**Disclaimer:** Did I mention how much I love Immortal Rain? Yeah… But it still doesn't belong to me. (Sigh…)

_**Snow Falls**_

ooooooo

The snow falls. Outside it is silent. Inside, it is even worse. And not even I know how to patch this up…

She's barely moved an inch. She has to move, I suppose, when she walks from the door to the snow blanketed yard and back again, always scanning the distance for the one person who might never come back to her. And yet it has seemed as if she has not moved at all…

She does not talk. She does not eat. Her agony is contagious. I have seen strangers come with laughter, only to pass by her and continue on their way in solemn despair, though they do not know her, or why she watches them in such sorrow. I have seen hope light up in her eyes, only to have it fade away moments later when she realizes that these strangers have no connection to her at all. And always there is silence as the snow falls.

I stand by the window watching and thinking. When I brought her to the Border, she was unconscious. She had been terribly injured – both physically and psychologically. I suppose that's only to be expected, considering what she had faced in the Angel's Graveyard. And though by this point, I've grown used to seeing her through both sickness and hurt, I am no councilor.

If anything, I am but a scientist. My medical skills are well enough for those who know me to call me 'Doctor' without making me a fraud. After all, was it not the Methuselah himself who said that my skills were trustworthy? He may not have liked me too much, but he trusted me to take care of her. And as a doctor, despite everything else that can be said about me, I _do_ care about her life. I don't want to stand at this window gazing out at her as she slowly freezes herself to death waiting for him!

I have never seen such pain in any other living mortal's eyes… She saw his heart crushed… and I do not know what to say to her that could possibly change that. She saw his heart crushed, and I can see it too every time I look into her eyes.

For three days and three nights she waited in the snow. Hoping.

He told her everything… Me? I only know what I know because I drugged him with enough truth serum to force it out of him. But he told her willingly. He cared about her. And that was why I told him…

_"Why do you let that girl follow you? I don't know your connection with Yuca, but if you let that girl stay… Isn't it time to end it? This game of acting human."_

Perhaps I had been cruel. But look what had happened to her… The little shorty. Machika… She was freezing to death out in the falling snow without him to care for her. That was a crueler fate than any words I could ever think up. Wasn't it?

I slowly approach her. It's colder out here than ice. The world was sheltered underneath a fresh layer of glittering snow… But the people living in that world were freezing because of it. I tell her so. Perhaps not gently, but I never once said that I was a gentle person.

No. I'm smarter than that. The Methuselah was the gentle one. And look where it got him.

_"Yuca chose Methuselah because he is gentler than anyone else. Because he feels more pain than anyone else."_

Right. I'm not gonna start being gentle with anyone. Not if _that_ is the reward you get for kindness.

And apparently I'm not kind. Not even in Machika's eyes. She kneels in the snow and asks me why it is that I, a doctor, would save her life…

"It would've been better for me to die there," she tells me. "I don't have Rain anymore." She cries endlessly. I know more about the Methuselah than I do about the little shorty, but I do know she's alone in the world. Her grandfather is gone. Now the Methuselah has been taken from her as well.

Even if, for argument's sake, she _didn't_ love the immortal, no one could deny that it was through the Methuselah that she had found some purpose to help quench her loneliness after her grandfather's death. And if she _did_ love him, and I was beginning to believe that she did, despite her youth and naïveté, then losing him could only be a torture that I myself could not even _begin_ to imagine.

It's kind of ironic. All this time it was the Methuselah who worried about losing Machika, for it was the Methuselah who was immortal, and Machika who was the one who could easily die at any moment. But the way it turned out… Machika was the one who lived. The Methuselah was the one who died. I never saw that coming. And Machika cried.

I shivered as I thought silently to myself. It was cold out. Machika's tears must have been drying to her face. If she kept crying like this, her tears may yet turn to ice and enclose around her as was that other girl whose body hung suspended in its own icy tomb.

Machika is not immortal. I can treat her wounds as best I can, and give her whatever medicines she may need when she's sick… But if she wants to live, then she needs more than that. My area of expertise does not lie with the human psyche, but even I know that if she can't find the will to live without her Methuselah, than there is nothing more that I can do for her.

But I am a doctor. And no matter what kind of human being I am, I do not want to see her die. So I will give her hope… Regardless of how fleeting that hope is.

I gaze down at her. Lying is not difficult. And even if I can somehow bring even _myself_ to hope, the truth of the matter is that what I say is probably just a lie. I have no proof to back it up. It is really nothing more than an outrageous theory. And as I've said, I am not a psychiatrist. For all I know, Yuca _could_ have kept the Methuselah alive this long just to kill him! Doesn't make much logical sense, but whoever said Yuca Collabell had any sense? The point is… Machika needs something to believe in right now. Otherwise, I can't see her finding any way to bring herself back to life. And as a doctor, even one such as me, all I want right now is to help her live again.

I gaze down at her and plant a seed in her mind that – just maybe – might blossom despite the falling snow. I gaze down at her and… I just start telling her…

I tell her this... "Methuselah might still be alive."


End file.
